H. W. Fowler documented that the term originally meant any descriptive phrase accompanying a name without negative connotations. The word suffered a vulgarization in 1926 that gave it an abusive imputation.
The Domesday Book of 1086 identified forty individuals with the given name Richard who carried locational or occupational bynames instead of heritable surnames. These distinctions were not heritable and could change based on circumstances like moving away from a location.
Homer's epics use fixed epithets to satisfy metrical requirements within the verse structure while filling out half-verse lines without adding essential information. Ancient Greek poets used phrases like cloud-gathering Zeus to describe storms without needing to conjure them directly.
William Safire wrote about this shift in 2008, noting how the word blossomed into a term for abuse over the past century. He observed how colleagues seized upon the word gleefully to describe political attacks during his column published that year.
Fixed epithets involve repetitive use of the same phrase for identical persons or objects to create a familiar cadence. Transferred epithets qualify nouns other than those they describe, creating what rhetoricians call hypallage such as a cheerful money example.